“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love…for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.” (John 15:9; 16:17).

As I was listening to Rita Springer’s CD All I Have one day, I was encouraged with a renewed revelation of the Father’s heart of love for me. The opening lines in her first song, “Oh how you love me Lord” touched my heart, and it got me to thinking. How many people today doubt the Father’s love for them? How many Christians don’t know and believe the love that God has for them? So the simple theme for today’s devotional is this: God loves you—yes, even you!

One afternoon when I was a youth pastor at Bible Fellowship, Geoff (one of our youth leaders) and I were praying, worshipping, and soaking in God’s presence in my office, and the Lord led us to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3. We really felt like the Lord wanted us to encourage the youth with a revelation of God’s love. Pray this prayer with me: “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height– to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19). Oh, that God would grant us the ability to understand how wide, how long, how deep, and how high the love of Christ is, and to be able to experience it personally, so that we could be filled with the fullness of God.

Do you know how much God loves you? The Bible says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs–heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” (Romans 8:15-17).

If you are a Christian—if you have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour—then you are one of God’s children. He’s our Big Dad up in Heaven. And if we are children of God, the Bible says we are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31-39). Wow! There are some awesome and encouraging truths in those Scriptures, and I want to challenge you to meditate on them today. God loves you—yes, even you! Nothing can separate you from His total, complete and unconditional love.